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Episode 156

February 16, 2017February 16, 2017 by Sara

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This episode contains the following segments: The Back Porch, The Front Porch, Ever-expanding Skill Set, and Off the Shelf.

Resources for Healthy Relationships

February is National Dating Violence Awareness Month and the week of Valentine’s Day is the Week of Respect. Everyone deserves a healthy and supportive relationship, but the signs of abuse can be difficult to detect. This week, I will share posts on the subject of dating violence. Please share resources with teens in your life, and let them know that you care and you’re willing to listen.

The Back Porch

The snow day was the perfect opportunity to ply all spindle-spun singles of Shetland. Look at the beautiful array of color from one fleece. — The snow day presented the perfect opportunity to ply all spindle-spun singles of Shetland. Look at the beautiful array of color from one fleece. Seven ounces (200 grams) / 400 yards.

The Front Porch

I've begun to spin this precious Hog Island roving from The Ross Farm. — I’ve begun to spin this precious Hog Island roving from The Ross Farm.

I used my blending board to make rolags from combed top, silk, dyed locks, alpaca and angora -- 4 ounces for meditative spindling. — I used my blending board to make rolags from combed top, silk, dyed locks, alpaca and angora — 4 ounces for meditative spindling.

Ever-expanding Skill Set

My goal was to create a creamy soup without using a lot of milk or cream in the soup. This is the ratio I came up with:

3 cups stock / broth
1 baked potato, peeled and mashed
1 cup milk

Combine the stock and potato by whizzing together in a blender. Return mixture to a large pot, season with salt, parsley, etc. As mixture warms, drizzle in milk. I also whisked in two teaspoons of powdered cheese.

Meanwhile, I cubed four thin-skinned red potatoes into bite-sized pieces and cooked them in water until they were JUST done.

Add cubed potatoes to soup, bring up to a boil and top with your favorite baked potato toppings: bacon, scallions, cheese, etc.

This amount makes four servings; just keep the ratio and increase amounts to make more soup.

Curried Purple Cabbage and Sweet Potato Soup featured on the Taproot blog — click for a link to the recipe.

Off the Shelf

“Valentine for Ernest Mann” by Naomi Shihab Nye
for more love poems (funny, erotic, classic, friendship) visit Poetry Foundation

Arrows and Doorways

The design for this super-cozy cowl was inspired by textiles in a hotel lobby. Concentric geometric shapes kept playing in my mind until finally I was able to chart the pattern and get it onto my needles. The interplay of this chevron-like patterning has a mesmerizing effect–while you’re knitting and when you wear the finished accessory.

Knit up a cowl with yarn from your stash, adding some magical new mini-skeins from your advent calendar, or exchange leftover yarn with a friend. The design invites frequent color changes, and makes an ideal knit for the advent season. It could be just as striking knit with two high-contrast colors.

While most cowls of this type are seamed within a band of a single color, this pattern incorporates a technique called stranded donut grafting, an incredibly clever and completely seamless graft that allows you to maintain colorwork patterning so that your starting and ending rounds are undetectable. Really! With many possibilities for color play and a new technique to add to your skill set, this cowl pattern is really an opportunity for knitters to level-up!

NEW PATTERN DESIGN!

ONE DARK BLUE NIGHT

This hat is the third in a series of patterns inspired by teachings in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves. This time, I drew inspiration from Estés’ retelling of a Japanese tale, Tsukina Waguma or “The Crescent Moon Bear,” in which a young woman travels to the cave of an incredibly intimidating and ferocious bear. She makes several journeys to the cave, leaving food and quickly retreating, until “one dark blue night,” she musters the courage to stand her ground and ask for what she seeks--one hair from a moon-shaped patch on the bear’s chest--which she is granted. The young woman returns, triumphant, to the old healer who has sent her on this quest. She believes this single hair is the magic ingredient in solving the problem that plagues her. She holds it forth, but the healer tosses the hair into the flames. The young woman is in despair until she realizes the true lesson of her quest: that using her determination, courage, and patience, as she did with the crescent moon bear, will help her to confront the challenge at hand.

The moon phase motif of this colorwork hat is meant to capture the magic of a dark blue night--when the moon shines brightly overhead, the frosty air sparkles with possibility, and we succeed in summoning accumulated wisdom from deep within ourselves so that we can apply it to our own healing. Choose colors to conjure a wintery night sky, or select a palette of your signature colors.

Available on Ravelry December 20th.

Yarns at Yin Hoo

Episode 156

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